Meaning of oriental words

Monday, April 9, 2012

In French, the
word malabar is used to designate a
man who is physically strong and well built, a muscle man, so to speak. This word has been transmitted to us French
through the sailors, because in its primary meaning, a malabar is a docker,
whom the western sailors have come across in the Easten harbours and who
originates from the Malabar coast in India.
This region belongs to the Indian State of Kerala, and derives its name
from the malayalam
മലബാര്‍ /malabār/, itself derived from the ethnonym /malay/ meaning « inhabitant
of Kerala ; one who speaks malayalam ».

But the very root
of this word comes from the proto-dravidian word /*màl/ ( മല /mala/in malayalam, மலை /malay/in tamil...) meaning « mountain, hill »,
since the state of Kerala is delimited by the sea on one side and by a hilly area
on the other, which serves as a natural
border.

When we French people hear the word malabar, what immediately comes to our mind is the thick pinkish chewing gum that we call malabar, which became popular in the 1970s, and whose icon is a non Keralite body-built blond muscle-man.The relationship between the chewing gum and its muscled icon underlines how strong a jaw we need to chew this gum !

The words Malaysia and Malaysian could as well be
derived from the dravidian « mala », although another hypothesis
states the name of the Melayu river
located on the nearby island of Sumatra as a more probable origin.

The second part
of the word malabar probably
originates from the arabic برّ/barr/« land, country », which is used in
other toponyms, as is the case for Zanzibar whose persian nameزنگبار/zangibār/comes from the arabic زنجبرّ /zanjbar/meaning « the land of the blacks (زنج /zanj/)».

From this same
root comes the catalan barri, which
designates a place which is inhabited outside the city, from which are derived
the French pyrenean patronym Dubarry and
its counterparts Barielle, Barriol or Barrios.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Boutiqueis a wordborrowed from the Greekάποθήκη/apothêke/"place ofdeposit"in which the wordθήκη/thêke/ means"box". The Provencalboticaacted as an intermediarybetween Greek andFrench andwe find theword inSpanishbodegawiththe modern sense of "cave" or "attic". Theword's secondary meaningcan also be "wine shop".

We find the same ideaof "place ofdeposit" in the wordof Arabic originmagazine "military depot for arms".Arabicمخزن /makhzan/"warehouse store"stems fromthe rootخزن /khazana/which means "store" and in French it takes the sense of "shop" (magasin).

The word Makhzenis the same Arabic word for"warehouse" and is used in Morocco to designate the Moroccanpowerand all which is related to it. Since theeventsof the Arab spring, this term is tainted with aconservative andbackward-lookingconnotation.

The word dragoman which is the name of this blog is a bit outdated, especially in its original meaning as an interpreter. The dragoman was the official interpreter of a Western country with a Middle Eastern power and vice versa. The dragomans were trained in France at École des Jeunes de Langues, ancestor of the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations​​, ​​INALCO in Paris.

This word was borrowed from Arabic ترجمان /turjumān/ "interpreter" from the root ترجمة /tarjama/ "translate".

It remained a place name : Драгоман Dragoman, a small city in Bulgaria, and familly names such Tordjman and Tuđman /tudjman/ as in the case of Franjo Tudjman, first Croatian president.

In French language we kept the sentence par le truchement de "through, via something or somebody"

A dragoman introduced the Persian envoy Mirza Mohammed Reza Qazvini to Napoleon in a painting of Francois Mulard

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

In765thesecondAbbasid CaliphAl-Mansur decided to createhis new capitalto which he gave the Persian nameBaghdad. The word بغداد
Baghdad/baġdad/consists of twowords meaning"God-given".

Thefirstcomes from theOld Persian/baga/"god", itself derived from theIndo-European root/*bhag-/"to share, to distribute." It is thisroot thatgave theSanskritभाग/bhāga/ "goodfortune,prosperity,lord"extended to भागवत/bhāgavata/"relativeto God"and theorigin of the nameof one of theessential booksof Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gitaभगवद्गीता"singing of the Divine". The wordpagoda iscertainlythe tamil pronunciationof the sameभागवत/bhāgavata/ andthen designatedthe goddessKali.The Portuguesealteredthe senseto giveit to a place ofpagan worship.

The craftsmenof Baghdadproduceda fabricthat ItalianscalledBaldacchinoin reference tothe city known by the Tuscansas Baldacco"Baghdad". From here came the english word baldachin "canopy of state" and french baldaquin.

The secondpart of the wordBaghdad, ie /dad/"given"is thepast participle of thePersian wordرارن/dâdan/ "to give", derived from theIndo-European root/*dō/'to give'. From herealso comes the Frenchword "donner"(latindonar) or Russianдать/dat'/ 'to give', origin of the wordдача/dača/ dachawas-before it becomesa"country cottage" - a"donated land" as a reward.